Private Fears in Public Places (15.)
Directed by Alain Resnais.
Starring Sabine Azema, Laura Morante, Lambert Wilson, Pierre Arditi, Isabelle Carre, Andre Dussolier. 120 mins.
Two cultural icons who've fallen from repute, legendary French avant-garde director Resnais and prolific English playwright Alan Ayckbourne, have teamed up for this light tragi-comic piece about loneliness and longing for love in a snowbound Paris.
I seem to remember a decade or so back Ayckbourne was being talked up as a theatrical genius but now his prodigious output rarely troubles the West End. Resnais is still regarded as one of cinema’s great innovators even though his Last Year in Marienbad now looks distinctly risible. Fortunately, the man seems to have aged better than his films and now into his 80’s he’s still working.
Private Fears takes place over a number of days in a paperweight vision of Paris that is afflicted by the kind of relentless snowfall normally only seen in Disney Christmas films. Not just deep and crisp and even but steady and constant and yet so absorbent that the levels on the street never vary even though it snows without cease for the entire course of events.
It has much the same effect on audiences as real snow has on British people: enormously distracting to the point of obsession. You keep wondering why, what’s the point of it? There’s a small visual payoff near the end but it has no influence on the plot – nobody misses an appointment because they slip over and break a bone. It’s just there, like the rain in Blade Runner.
Resnais adaptation of Ayckbourne’s 2004 play (his 67th) seems to be incredibly faithful - its structure of six characters interacting in pairs or threes over 54 short scenes lends itself easily to adaptation. It’s a study of isolated lives and thwarted love that on screen is certainly funny and moving but not quite funny or moving enough. It’s probably marvellous on stage but it seems rather exposed on screen
Twenty years ago this would’ve been ITV’s big “quality” Christmas treat. It would’ve starred at least half the cast of The Good Life and I doubt it would’ve been any more or less effective than what we have here.
Private Fears in Public Places (15.)
Directed by Alain Resnais.
Starring Sabine Azema, Laura Morante, Lambert Wilson, Pierre Arditi, Isabelle Carre, Andre Dussolier. 120 mins.
Two cultural icons who've fallen from repute, legendary French avant-garde director Resnais and prolific English playwright Alan Ayckbourne, have teamed up for this light tragi-comic piece about loneliness and longing for love in a snowbound Paris.
I seem to remember a decade or so back Ayckbourne was being talked up as a theatrical genius but now his prodigious output rarely troubles the West End. Resnais is still regarded as one of cinema’s great innovators even though his Last Year in Marienbad now looks distinctly risible. Fortunately, the man seems to have aged better than his films and now into his 80’s he’s still working.
Private Fears takes place over a number of days in a paperweight vision of Paris that is afflicted by the kind of relentless snowfall normally only seen in Disney Christmas films. Not just deep and crisp and even but steady and constant and yet so absorbent that the levels on the street never vary even though it snows without cease for the entire course of events.
It has much the same effect on audiences as real snow has on British people: enormously distracting to the point of obsession. You keep wondering why, what’s the point of it? There’s a small visual payoff near the end but it has no influence on the plot – nobody misses an appointment because they slip over and break a bone. It’s just there, like the rain in Blade Runner.
Resnais adaptation of Ayckbourne’s 2004 play (his 67th) seems to be incredibly faithful - its structure of six characters interacting in pairs or threes over 54 short scenes lends itself easily to adaptation. It’s a study of isolated lives and thwarted love that on screen is certainly funny and moving but not quite funny or moving enough. It’s probably marvellous on stage but it seems rather exposed on screen
Twenty years ago this would’ve been ITV’s big “quality” Christmas treat. It would’ve starred at least half the cast of The Good Life and I doubt it would’ve been any more or less effective than what we have here.
